Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Miss Maidee Had It Right

It seems that Miss Maidee (pronouced May-dee) who was my second grade teacher, was right all along. She was an old maid and she seemed to me to be ancient. She had blue hair that she kept in place with a hairnet, wore those "Ole Lady Comfort" shoes (my Mama's name for them) you know the kind that came in any color that you wanted as long as it was black, and laced up and had big chunky heels...okay I digress......she wore shirt waist dresses that I thought were beyond ugly and she was germophobic. In fact she took germophobia to a level that is impressive even by todays standards.
She never ever touched any of us. Well, she never touched our skin. If for some serious reason that she had to touch one of us, like to jerk Mark Bowie out of his chair and stand him in the corner, she would grab the tiniest corner of our shirt with her thumb and index finger.
And she never ever ever touched a door knob. Never. There were three doors to our classroom. It was the job of whomever sat next to the door to open it for her. She never touched our desks, our pencils, our books and we never ever touched her desk or her. If we were called to her desk we stood within 3 feet of her desk and never touched it.
And are you ready for this, she kept a bottle of alcohol on her desk and poured if over her hands anytime she had a potential or real contamination of her hands. So see that was 50 some odd years ago and she was using alcohol to decontaminate her hands!! Now that said, her hands were always in terrible shape, they were red, raw, cracked and arthritic. But I don't remember her being sick or missing a day of school.
She would have loved the alcohol gels..........

Wow--great story. As a person who used to teach and had continuous sinus infections, colds, flu, I admire this woman. I have become like her now myself. I keep a roll of paper towels in the bathrooms and paper cups as well. I have sanitizers in every room now and in my purse. Does it help? Yes!

My mother drilled it into our heads--never directly touch ANYTHING in a public bathroom. To this day, I use my sleeve to open and close doors & turn on faucets. My most impressive accomplishment, however, is my ability to "hover". It's getting pretty tough now that I'm older but if you can grab the handicap stall, you're good to go . . . literally. And I love your lovely banner!!

OCD hand washing, I guess. who can blame her for that? 2 of my sisters are elementary school teachers; a teacher gets whatever the kids bring to school! it's a lot easier to teach the kids about washing their hands than some adults, tho...lol!kudzu

About Me

I blog therefore I am.
I am married to my exact opposite, but I love him with all my heart. We have been married 17 years. I got two children in the deal, who have given me a total of 7 grandchildren. I'm doing this thing backwards. I got the teenagers first, they grew up and married and then I got the babies. We have two puppy girls CiCi and GinGin. They are named after Elvis' women, Priscilla Presley and Ginger Alden. We have two new additions to our family, a baby chihuahua girl--Ann Margaret and a baby chihuahua boy--Fontana. DJ Fontana was Elvis' drummer and of course Ann-Margaret was long time friend of Elvis. They of course have nicknames--TanTan and BitBit...